Computational and Experimental Investigation of the Low Velocity Impact Behavior of Nano Engineered E-Glass Fiber Reinforced Composite Laminates

This paper presents computational and experimental investigation of the low velocity impact behavior of nano engineered E-glass fiber reinforced composite laminates. The Tetra Ethyl Orthosilicate (TEOS) chemically engineered glass nanofibers were manufactured using electrospinning technique and were investigated for their potential to improve the interlaminar properties. Plain weave fiberglass prepregs were used for manufacturing ten ply thick laminates. For production of the laminates with electrospinning interface layers the addition of the electrospinning sheets and an additional layer of resin film was used. The fabricated laminates were subjected to low velocity impacts of various energy levels to study the progressive damage and deformation mechanics of fiberglass laminates with and without electrospun nanofibers. The low velocity impact behavior was modeled using the transient dynamic finite element program LSDYNA. It was observed that the simulations results are in good agreement with the experimental results for lower impact energies. In addition, the simulated maximum impact force is smaller than the experimental value (soft response) at each drop height and at higher energy levels, the area under impact force vs time increases when electrospun nanofibers are used in the laminates. The study indicates that, the impact duration increases when electrospun nanofibers are used. Impact duration increases due to an additional damage accumulations in electrospun nanofibers layers. Both computational and experimental investigations clearly indicate that inserting interlaminar electrospun nanofiber layers improves the impact resistance of composites by absorbing additional impact energies.